A new provincial bill set to take effect in the fall will change bargaining procedures for firefighters in North Battleford and could also give them the right to strike.
Bill 85 will change the rules when it comes to filing for arbitration for cities with a population of fewer than 20,000 people. Previously, the cutoff was 10,000, but complaints by some smaller cities have caused the Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety to raise the limit.
The changes will now cover Yorkton, Swift Current and North Battleford, joining Moose Jaw, Regina, Saskatoon and Prince Albert.
"Lack of an arbitrator, in my opinion, keeps people from having to be honest, keeps them from having to be reasonable," said Kirby Benning, president of the Saskatchewan Professional Fire Fighters Association.
However, Mike Carr, deputy minister from the ministry, says the new legislation doesn't take away the right to arbitration, it just requires certain criteria to be met.
"They have access to third party dispute resolution assistance, and that assistance is available to them, as long as they're making progress. If they're not making progress, then that process will have failed and there will be a 14-day cooling off period, during which the parties can reconsider their relative positions with respect to advancing to a labour dispute, a full-blown strike or lockout, or finding some mechanism that will allow them to reach an agreement," said Carr.
The process for getting arbitration isn't the only change being made. If mediation is awarded, the arbitrator will no longer just evaluate the two offers and pick one, or a fair number in between. Now, a "final offer selection" process will be imposed. Both parties put forward their best offer, and the arbitrator has to pick one or the other.
"That will create an environment again, from our perspective, that will compel the parties to consider very carefully the issues that are in dispute before they go to that mechanism. Because that mechanism will provide a winner and a loser," said Carr.
Part of the Saskatchewan Employment Act will also make significant changes to the way essential services are handled.
"The recommendation again is, if you look at, kind of, where we hope to end up next spring with the essential services legislation, is that in effect firefighters and their employers will be in a situation where there is a right to strike, to determine the impact of essential services designation and where an essential services designation is sufficiently high to cause impairment of the union's ability to strike, then they will have access, as I said, to an interest arbitration process," said Carr.
The option to strike would provide firefighters with a much larger bargaining chip than just the threat of arbitration. However, if wage negotiations get to that point, it would leave cities without firefighters.
Benning said the thought that firefighters don't already negotiate without unfairly jumping to the arbitration option is untrue.
"When you look at the facts, you see that North Battleford has had 19 agreements since 1970, never gone to arbitration a single time. So, obviously there's some negotiating going on out there," he said.
Carr said there were complaints from smaller cities, claiming the arbitration process resulted in wages being too high and unaffordable.
Benning points to Weyburn, whose population recently surpassed 10,000, putting them into the current bracket where its firefighters are entitled to arbitration.
"Obviously this is a way that they can keep the wages low for firefighters in Weyburn," he said.
Benning also told the News-Optimist that Weyburn's firefighters have the second lowest wages in Canada.
"They could be unreasonable, and my position is they have been unreasonable while they didn't have an arbitration backing up the negotiation process," said Benning.
The new law, set to take effect in the fall, is similar to British Columbia's in the way arbitration needs to be applied for. However, Benning said Saskatchewan is the only province whose arbitration rights vary by population.
